One morning Minna, who breakfasted in her own room, having finished
sooner than usual, in consequence of the premature arrival of
Arcangela, the housemaid, with the meal, found herself also ready to go
out earlier than was her wont. She put on her outdoor things and went
towards the dining-room to see if perchance a young American girl, to
whom she had taken something of a liking, should be already there. It
was Friday, and she had promised the girl to drive with her some fine
Friday or Monday afternoon in Doria Pamfili Gardens. She thought she
might catch her at breakfast, and arrange the matter before going out.
She was about to enter the room, when the scene which was going on
there arrested her attention. She paused, and stood spellbound on the
threshold, watching it.
Several of the visitors of Casa Dietrich were seated at the table,
either breakfasting or waiting till their breakfasts should be
ready. Some were reading newspapers, some had letters, some were in
conversation. At the end of the table nearest the door were seated
a pair who, having been there a week, were this morning going away.
They had been at Rome before, and had merely been here this time, they
said, to refresh their memories. They were Scottish, sententious,
conventional and orthodox. The husband was elderly--verging on
old--with a queer, ruddy apple kind of face, surrounded with a bristly
little white beard, which made a sort of frame for it. His nose was red
at the tip, and his excessively near-sighted light-blue eyes looked
weak and watery. He somewhat resembled some aged and faithful Highland
retainer as seen on the stage; and one felt rather surprised than
otherwise to find, when he rose up, that he was clad, not in kilt and
sporran, but in a pair of black-and-white check trousers.
His lady-wife was more patriotic in her garb, and wore a gown of some
bright tartan, of rather a large pattern. A blue ribbon was tied
round her neck, and in her light hair--she was much younger than her
spouse--was always to be seen a pin of great dimensions, ever stuck
into the selfsame coil of the selfsame plait, and surmounted by one
large and flawless imitation pearl. Hans Riemann had dubbed her ‘the
Scotch Pearl’ within five minutes of first seeing her. The name by
which the couple was known to the world at large was Macdougall.
There they sat, having finished their meal, and held in conversation or
discussion no less a person than Signor Oriole. His back was turned
towards Minna, but she saw from his shoulders that he was vexed,
rasped, disgusted. His rusty frock-coat drooped mournfully towards his
knees; his head was thrown back. While he listened and answered, he was
engaged, as Minna saw with a sudden feeling of painful surprise, in
gathering together their cups and saucers, their plates and egg-cups,
and putting them on to a tray which stood in front of him. The husband
of the Scotch Pearl seldom interfered in his wife’s arrangements--it
was she who led the conversation, in something which, as Minna
gathered, was intended for French.
‘Nous partongs aujordwee,’ she remarked to Giuseppe, folding her arms
and looking at him, while the pearl gleamed from the plaits of auburn.
‘Angsee nous voulongs avwor notter congt. Est-il prête?’
‘Le voici, madame,’ replied Giuseppe, with the utmost promptitude,
producing an envelope from his pocket.
‘Ow! Mercy!’ said the Pearl, somewhat taken aback by this readiness of
retort. ‘Laisong nous vawr,’ she added, opening it, and perusing the
items, carefully checking them off with her fingers.
Signor Giuseppe’s long thin fingers were busy, as Minna saw, among the
plates and dishes. She instinctively drew a little back, but interest
and curiosity tied her to the spot. She knew that he was writhing under
the infliction. Wonderful to relate, the Pearl had no exception to take
to any of the details of her bill.
‘Wee,’ she remarked. ‘C’est jooste. My dear, have you your purse? I
want a hundred and twenty lire.’ Then, turning once more to Giuseppe,
with affable condescension: ‘Nous partongs a ongze oor. Voulez-vous
commingday oon voitoor poor nous, at ayay soing que tous les malles
sont ong bah de bonne oor.’
‘Non, madame, ce n’est pas mon métier a moi de commander des voitures
pour les voyageurs. Vous pouvez vous addresser au facchino,’ was the
reply, in a voice quivering with suppressed fury.
‘Commong?’ asked the lady inquiringly, not understanding this rapid
flow of words and at the same time she handed him notes for the hundred
and twenty lire.
‘Merci,’ said he with a haughty bow, as he swept the last piece of
crockery on to the tray with a trembling hand, and added: ‘I will at
once give you the receipt.’
Leaving the tray on the table for Ettore to remove, he came out into
the hall, where pen and ink were always to be found. Minna made a
hasty movement to go away, but it was too late. Signor Giuseppe’s
movements were not slow. He was out of the room and confronting her in
an instant. For one or two seconds they faced each other, Minna wishing
that the ground would open beneath her and swallow her up, Signor
Giuseppe very pale and very erect. At last he said in a low voice:
‘Signora.’
‘Signore,’ she began, but he interrupted her, saying in an icy voice:
‘You are earlier than usual this morning. Can I do anything for you?’
‘I--I wonder if Miss Scotson is there,’ said Minna confusedly, as with
a great effort she walked past him into the dining-room and looked
round.
Miss Scotson was not there, and Minna had lost all desire to speak to
her. Shaking her head, she came out of the room, giving an embarrassed,
timid glance to where at one side of the hall Signor Giuseppe was
writing out the receipt for the Scotch Pearl and her husband. She
longed to speak to him, but dared not be the first; he took absolutely
no notice of her as she went rapidly away out of the hall door,
down the steps and out, in the direction of her studio, but almost
unconscious of what she was doing.
‘Why did I go? What a fool I was! Why did I stand by the door when I
saw him there?... But why should it matter? If he can do the work of a
waiter before half a dozen others, why cannot he do it before me?’
She reached her studio, thus pondering, and tried to forget it all in
her work.
This was destined to be a day of contretemps. She returned to Casa
Dietrich for lunch, having an appointment in the middle of the
afternoon. At the meal Signor Giuseppe sat opposite to her as usual,
but did not notice her in any way, for which grace she was devoutly
thankful. The lunch went off peacefully enough. Ettore appeared to be
on his better behaviour, and less than an hour was consumed in the
entertainment.
Minna’s engagement that afternoon was at a reception given by her old
friend, Mrs. Charrington, a reception from which she dared not absent
herself, though not specially anxious to go there or anywhere. She knew
that some fifty or sixty guests had been invited, and that she must
appear more or less _en grande tenue_. She dressed herself therefore
with some care, and, a little after four, came from her room looking
very handsome and very attractive in a costume of gray silk and brown
fur. She was just throwing her fur cloak over her arm, knowing she
would want it as she drove to her friend’s house; and thus arrayed,
she went down a short passage which led into a long narrow kind of
ante-room, through which she had to pass to reach the entrance hall. No
sooner had she entered the ante-room than she saw that her ill-luck was
pursuing her. In the room were two persons in earnest, yea, passionate
discussion or dispute--Signor Giuseppe and Ettore. The subject of
their discourse was the week’s wash of household linen, which lay in
piles, neatly folded and fresh from the hands of the laundress, on the
tables, on the chairs, on the floor, and in every direction around
them. Signor Giuseppe held a long piece of paper covered with figures.
He had been reading out the list of the numbers of each article, and it
was Ettore’s duty to count them; to say _giusto_ if they were right,
and _non c’è_ if any of them were missing. The point in question now
was that some dinner-napkins were wanting, which, Ettore vowed, could
never have been sent to the wash at all, for that the woman who did the
washing was a very honest, upright woman, and, if they were not there,
it was an indisputable fact that they never had been there, let them
stand on the list as much as Signor Giuseppe or anyone else pleased.
‘You rascal!’ Giuseppe had just cried passionately. ‘Do you mean to
tell me I am a liar?’
The reply was a shrug expressing volumes.
‘Look again!’ ejaculated the irate gentleman. ‘Here are twenty-four
table-napkins on the list, and only twenty are to be found. Count
carefully. If they are not there, I will myself go and threaten the
wretched creature with the Questura and an exposure of her dishonesty.
Do you imagine I will let Signora Dietrich be thus plundered and not
lift a finger in her defence?’
Very unwillingly Ettore began his search all over again, and Giuseppe,
furious with his slowness, cast aside the list, and with his nervous
fingers turned over the things and began to help him. Minna was sorely
embarrassed. This was her only way of exit. She must either steal back
to her room and give up her party--for this was a business which would
not be over in five minutes--or she must brave the worst, walk through
the room, and take what came.
‘What a simpleton I am!’ she told herself. ‘I may turn my whole life
upside down if I am to be always thinking of things like this. I will
go straight through to the hall.’
She advanced with a faint hope of being able to slip unobserved past
the busy Signor Giuseppe--a vain aspiration. Whether he heard her step
or felt her presence, who shall say? He turned sharp upon her just
as she had come up to where he was, and stood there, looking angry
and excited, with a red colour in his cheeks. It was impossible to
quite ignore the situation--at least, for Minna it was. She forced an
embarrassed smile, and observed:
‘I see you are very busy.’
‘Yes,’ replied Signor Giuseppe with a horrid sneering laugh, as he
eyed her over from head to foot, ‘I am. This is my daily work. Yours,
I see, permits of more elegant arrangements in every way.’ He bowed
to her deeply, mockingly, and as she still hesitated, he added in the
same nasal sneering tone: ‘Gentilissima signora, pardon me if I remind
you that the time of the working man is precious, and our business
unfortunately takes up a good deal of room.’
She found absolutely nothing to say in reply to this. She saw how
angry he was. The veins on his forehead swelled, his eyes flashed, his
fingers worked. With a bow and a troubled look she passed out of the
room and into the hall. Seated in a little open carriage into which she
had stepped, and driving towards Mrs. Charrington’s house, she found
she was shaking with excitement, vexed and perturbed to her inmost
being.
‘I shall have to leave this place,’ she told herself. ‘It is an
impossible situation, and cannot continue. I am not going to have
my comfort ruined by a touchy man who chooses to set some perfectly
imaginary value on my opinion, and who is himself nothing to me--less
than nothing to me. I must go. What an unlucky moment that was in which
Signora Vincenzini came to me to tell me she was leaving Rome! I felt
at the time that it was the beginning of troubles, and so it was.’
She looked straight before her as they drove to one of the most
fashionable streets in a new quarter of the Quirinal, where her friend
lived. On setting off she had felt very angry with Signor Giuseppe
for annoying her by his evident vexation every time she saw him in a
position derogatory to his dignity.
‘It is senseless--so unreasonable,’ she said to herself. ‘It has to be;
I suppose he has chosen that it shall be so; and he ought to accept the
situation that he has created for himself. Anyone can see--at least,
I can--that he is a gentleman, and that this is a most unsuitable
occupation for him, but wouldn’t he be still more of a gentleman if he
took it quietly--dignified the office he has to fill instead of letting
its unpleasantnesses spoil his temper and make him look ridiculous? An
Englishman and English gentleman would do that. Of course he ought to
do it.’
But before she had arrived at her destination her thoughts had taken
another turn. She was no stranger in this land; she knew perfectly well
the passionate eagerness and excitability of these children of the
South; it was one of the traits which had endeared them to her. And
she knew that for all his undignified, unguarded, outspoken rebellion
against his position, Signor Oriole was none the less a gentleman, and
one of high degree. She knew, too, down in her secret heart, that his
uncontrollable vexation when she found him as to-day she had found him,
engaged in sordid, menial offices, arose from the fact that in his eyes
she was something above and beyond the herd of guests who filled the
_pensione_, and as to whose coming and going, seeing or not seeing,
commenting or not, upon his position, he was haughtily and superbly
indifferent.
She did not feel sure whether she was most pleased or most annoyed at
this fact; she knew it was a fact, and while she was trying to decide
what was her opinion upon it, her carriage stopped at the door of Mrs.
Charrington’s apartment. She dismissed it and went upstairs. In two
minutes she found herself in one of her friend’s lovely drawing-rooms,
which were filled with a dainty, perfumed, well-dressed crowd of
different nationalities. There were pretty girls, elegant women, and
a sprinkling of men of the most correct and irreproachable manner and
appearance. There were also a moderately well-developed ‘lion’ or two,
male and female, roaring just now as gently as any sucking-dove. The
trumpet tones of the American contingent were not wanting to complete
this specimen of the Englishwoman abroad and at home. Most of the
company were talking, laughing, and assiduously handing to each other
and consuming tea, cake, and liqueurs, discussing the last star at
the theatre or opera, the last scandal or gossip about the English
or American colony at Rome, the last novel; in a corner were two or
three who combined with fashion a passion for archæology, the last
discovery, the last fragment of a statue which had been unearthed in
any of the excavations, the possibility of more such discoveries on the
Palatine--if only one could get under the foundations of Villa Mills,
so jealously guarded by its nuns, what might not be found there? And
so forth. The winter daylight was almost over, the curtains had been
drawn, the lamps lighted. Soft rose-coloured or tender yellow silk
shades toned everything down, and made a kind of dreamland of the rooms
with their costly furniture and many treasures of art--with their soft
carpets, their rich rugs, and abundance of modern comforts.
Minna leaned back in the corner of a sofa, near a small table on which
stood one of these rose-shaded lamps. She had drunk her tea and was
idly holding the cup in her hand, her eyes fixed on the little drop
which remained at the bottom of it. She had been conversing for a short
time with a funny-looking little Scotch monsignore, who figured largely
at gatherings of this description, and of whom she was not particularly
fond. He had just removed his dapper little figure and blonde face with
its pink cheeks to the vicinity of a tall, handsome English girl, who
was more disposed than Minna to be gracious to him. Minna, as she sat
there, seemed to see Monsignore Macpherson’s figure fade away, and be
all at once replaced by another, which rose from the ground or appeared
in the air, forming itself gradually before her mental vision: a
finely-set head, and a countenance at once pale and bronzed, eyes that
flashed, lips that could be eloquent, nervously-moving white hands, and
a very shabby suit of clothes and rusty black coat.
‘What was he like before--when he was young? How did he ever come to be
in this pitiful condition? Surely no man with any will or spirit need
have drifted into such a state! There must have been a great weakness
somewhere, I am certain, which he now recognises. He knows it is his
own fault, and that is what makes him so abnormally irritable; yes,
abnormally, even for an irritable Italian, and----’
‘Minna Hastings, I have not been able to get a word with you until this
moment,’ said a clear, decided voice just at her elbow.
At the same moment, a white hand, on which flashed many rings, was laid
on her wrist, and Mrs. Charrington, in a billow of silk and lace, sat
down beside her. Minna sighed and looked up.
‘How could I expect to be distinguished above other women?’ she asked,
forcing a smile. ‘When you have fifty or sixty people to attend to some
must come short.’
‘Well, you see, I do my possible--and I have been well assisted by
my niece there, that pretty little thing with the yellow hair and
forget-me-not eyes. She has turned the head of every Italian man in the
room. She is going to spend the winter with me.’
‘Is she?’ said Minna vaguely.
Her hostess noticed her want of interest, but did not care just then to
remark upon it, so she proceeded:
‘Having spoken to everyone, I may now rest myself for a few minutes
beside you. You used to be the embodiment of rest and tranquillity.
What is this I hear about your having left your apartment?’
‘It is quite true. I left it because I had to. I was very much annoyed
about it. After revelling for so long in the comforts provided by
Signora Vincenzini, it is not easy to reconcile one’s self to anything
less.’
‘No, of course. And where are you now? Stay, I remember your note was
dated Piazza Bocca della Verità. I never heard of any place there. What
is it? A hotel, an apartment--what?’
‘What my cousin Hans, who introduced me to it, calls diggings,’ said
Minna, with a laugh not altogether unconstrained.
It was one thing to act on impulse, and go, chaperoned as it were by
Hans Riemann, to Casa Dietrich, and make believe that she enjoyed
the flavour of Bohemianism there; it was quite another to give a
description of the place--a description which should sound in any way
credible or suitable to this keen-eyed woman of the world, who, however
much she might in her own heart detest conventionality, nevertheless
knew that it was the price which had to be paid for the enjoyment of a
certain position and consideration in the world, and who did not mean
to sacrifice that position and all its good things, let the price be
twice as heavy.
‘Diggings--a _pensione_, I suppose you mean? Does Riemann live there?
I always address to his studio; there he is, by the way, talking to
Kitty. I thought I knew of all the _pensioni_ in Rome which have any
pretensions to position--unhappily for me,’ said Mrs. Charrington.
‘Perhaps it is a new place. There’s ample scope for a good new
_pensione_ in Rome.’
‘Oh no, it is quite old, and very shabby and second-class. Hans does
live there, and I’m only staying till I find an apartment to suit
me. I am difficult to please,’ said Minna briskly. ‘You would be
horror-struck, I dare say, at some of the doings.... And, then, I am so
much at my studio,’ she added, with forced indifference.
‘Yes; are you busy just now?’ asked Mrs. Charrington, fixing her
critical hazel eyes upon Minna’s face and observing her attentively.
‘Yes--no--that is, I ought to be. I keep trying. Oh, you know, Mary,
how wretched I become when I get to a certain point in my work--always!
I begin with such hope, thinking that I have really, at last, hit
upon an idea that someone else has not had--and had in a better
shape--before. And then, some fine day, I walk into the Vatican or the
Campidoglio and look at things, and it is all over.’
‘Is this all over, then?’
‘Not yet--no.’
‘Then it can hardly be that which worries you.’
‘Worries me? I am not worried,’ said Minna hastily. ‘Why, do I look
worried?’
‘I said worried for want of a better name. You don’t look like
yourself. From what you say of your _pensione_ I should imagine that
you don’t get proper food at this precious establishment, and that it
is beginning to tell upon you.’
‘Oh, what nonsense!’ began Minna, when two guests, coming up, began a
profuse leave-taking.
Mrs. Charrington turned to them; she was quickly surrounded by other
people. Minna, she knew not why, breathed more freely, and presently
she also took her leave.
‘I am coming to see you soon,’ said Mrs. Charrington. ‘Must I come to
your studio or to Bocca della Verità?’
‘Come to whichever I am most likely to be found at at the time,’ said
Minna composedly.
‘Good; I shall look you up some day soon.’
She nodded. Minna went downstairs and walked till she met an open
carriage.
Rome was just beginning to spend the evening; it would continue at
that occupation till the small hours of the morning. The streets
would be vocal, the whips would be cracking, the crowd would be moving
nearly all through the night. Just now it looked gay, full of life and
brilliance, as she drove homewards through the brilliantly-lighted
streets and piazzas, past splashing Trevi, with its groups of loungers
outlined dark in the electric light against the shining wet marble
slabs, now past a row of shops illuminated by all the power of gas
which could be turned on, then suddenly a plunge into some obscure,
narrow street, again an open square, brightly lighted on every side,
and rising from the centre of it the solemn majesty of the Pantheon,
with its wondrous dome and its awful portico, seeming to say, ‘I stand
alone now, and have many thoughts, many memories, O ye little hurrying
children of to-day! Once I was one of a great company, some of whom
were grander than I; light your gas flames, spread your electricity,
multiply your scientific microscopes, but with them all ye shall never
read my secret nor the secret of them that made me. That is not for
the scientist to tell, but for the poet; and I observe that scientists
become more and poets fewer; yet I may stand to shelter him, though he
be another thousand years a-coming.’
It was a spot in which Minna had never yet found herself without a
secret thrill of pleasure. She felt it even now, preoccupied as she
was, and looked with grateful eyes at the huge building as she passed
it. In five minutes more she was at the door of Casa Dietrich.
When she entered the hall, she found it was much later than she had
imagined, and that the ubiquitous Ettore was even now on his way from
door to door, knocking on each one and uttering his customary chant of
‘Dinner is ready.’
Two disastrous encounters she had already had to-day with Signor
Giuseppe. She went into the dining-room in some trepidation, sincerely
hoping that a third might not take place. Should such a thing happen,
she would be forced to conclude that someone had looked at her with the
evil eye.
For a time all went well. She pointedly made a very polite bow to
Signor Giuseppe, which he returned in silence and with cold majesty,
and the meal began. The soup had gone round. Then came a dish of roast
meat which was first handed round Minna’s side of the table. She helped
herself to it and to the vegetables which followed, and had eaten
her portion before she noticed that anything had gone wrong. Then,
having finished, she beheld at the opposite side of the table a row of
anxious-looking, downcast faces. On the plates before them lay little
heaps of vegetables which had been there so long that they had ceased
even to steam.
There was no sign of any meat, and Ettore, as she soon perceived, was
conspicuous by his absence. There was, moreover, something portentous,
something which warned of coming disaster, in the very quietness and
stillness which prevailed at that side of the table. Something had
happened, or was happening, without the least doubt--something of
ill-omen. Minna felt the shock and the discomfort of it as strongly as
if she herself had been the person concerned. She would have given a
good deal not to be obliged to look at Signor Giuseppe at this moment;
but who is there who does not always at such a crisis involuntarily
look in the direction he would most eagerly avoid? It was only as
her eyes were dragged towards him that she became conscious that the
solitary voice she had for some time heard as in a dream, holding
forth, was that of Signor Giuseppe. She listened for a moment, her eyes
fixed upon her plate.
He was talking to a young Englishman who sat next him, a recent
arrival, whom he had taken into special favour on account of his
having taken the trouble to study Italian seriously, and because he was
really interested in certain periods of Roman history.
‘Yes,’ Signor Giuseppe was just now saying, ‘it is true. Tiberius was
an aristocrat, nothing else. Read what the German historian says of
him; how he despised the mob even more profoundly than he hated the
patricians. Yet even he dared not neglect the amusement of that mob.
Even he had to think out spectacles for that mob’s entertainment. There
was fear mingled with his contempt. “Bread and the games” was a word
now fairly established, and not to be neglected with impunity. He----’
Here Minna found her eyes, whether she would or not, fixed on Signor
Giuseppe’s face, and she knew in an instant that all this brave show
of historical instruction was put on; the whole thing was put on.
Young Mr. Humphreys was wondering secretly how long he was to wait for
his dinner. Signor Giuseppe, while he spoke, was crumbling bread with
one hand, dashing the other through his hair, and casting glances of
strained, anxious suspense towards the door leading to the kitchen
regions, through which the service came. But, engrossed though he was
with this, he of course knew in an instant that Minna’s attention had
been drawn to the proceedings--that she was looking at him. This time
he did not look angry, he looked agonized.
Such a fiasco in the proceedings was enough to make all the guests take
themselves off first thing to-morrow morning to other establishments
where they would be better served, and after all, though he hated and
despised these _forestieri_, or thought he did, he was dependent on
their money and their favour for--Signora Dietrich’s bread.
‘Yes,’ he continued, with a desperate effort at composure as he
wandered in his misery from one theme to another, scarce knowing what
he was saying; ‘there is no doubt that the gloomy-looking place you
speak of, overlooking the Forum, was the palace of Caligula, but as for
anyone being able to point out the exact corridor or vault in which
his assassination took place, as M. Boissie, the French archæologist,
pretends to do--that is a pure and simple impossibility, and----’
At this moment, at the prompting of some evil spirit or demon, there
flashed into Minna’s mind a reminiscence of the days of her youth,
and Brewer’s ‘Guide to Roman History,’ with its pragmatical questions
and sententious answers, one of which, relating to Caligula, had sunk
deeply into her mind.
‘How long,’ asked the ‘Guide to Roman History,’ ‘did this idiotic
monster reign?’
She tried to suppress the almost hysterical laugh which she felt was
surely coming--the laugh at the disappointed diners, the ridiculous
inadequacy of the service at this strange establishment, at Brewer’s
sweeping characterization of Caligula--the tears which were just as
ready to come at the thought what a long day of torture this must have
been to the poor fallen gentleman opposite to her, who even now could
think of nothing more trivial or amusing with which to tide over this
awful failure in the evening meal than dissertations on the character
of Tiberius and the ruins on the Palatine.
The two sensations combined were almost too much for her; she
suppressed any sound of laughter, but she could not altogether control
her expression of countenance. She felt she must speak--say something,
however idiotic, to someone--and she turned to Hans Riemann, intending
to ask him sharply if he had nothing to say for himself, but not
before Signor Giuseppe had seen first her look at himself, and then
what must have seemed the ill-concealed mirth on her countenance. A
flood of angry colour rushed over his face. He was evidently insulted
to his inmost being, and Minna felt paralyzed.
‘I must go,’ she said within herself. ‘I must get away from here, for I
can’t bear it.’
Once again her unconscious saviour in such moments came to the rescue.
Ettore emerged from the kitchen looking very grave, and stole round to
Signor Giuseppe as if anxious to hide himself from the view of all but
him. Arrived at his side he bent low and whispered something in his
ear--no long communication, but apparently a terrible one.
‘Maledetto!’ came from between Signor Oriole’s clenched teeth, and,
like a whirlwind, he passed round the table, through the door, and was
gone, followed by Ettore as by a pallid shadow.
Then broke loose the flood of talk, comment, question.
‘What is the meaning of all this? Are we going to have nothing to eat?
Has the food given out? Has Ettore let it fall and spoiled it all?
What a place is this! I never knew anything like it!’ from English and
Americans, while a deep bass chorus came from the German contingent.
‘Ach, um Gotteswillen, was ist denn geschehen? Kriegen wir weiter
nichts? Was soll das alles bedeuten?’
Hans Riemann uplifted his voice to soothe the impatient multitude.
‘Accidents will happen,’ he said. ‘It’s the cook, I know. He was new
two days ago, and is most likely drunk at this moment. It can’t be
helped.’
‘Very well for you--you have had your roast meat,’ replied young
Humphreys; ‘but what about us?’
‘Pazienza! You’ll get something,’ said Hans. ‘If nothing is to be
had here, they will send to the _trattoria_ close by. They do many
queer things here, but they have a sense of honour as regards people’s
dinners.’
Thus it happened. Signor Giuseppe did not return. Minna did not remain
in the room till the end of the meal. She had had enough in every way,
and retired to her own quarters early.
‘It is intolerable,’ she told herself for the fiftieth time. ‘To-morrow
I shall make preparations for leaving. I won’t stand any more of this.’
Indeed, it was long since she had been made to feel so uncomfortable,
and, as has been already intimated, she was a woman who had always
had a great deal of her own way, and who did not take kindly to this
experience--of being made uncomfortable.